Real Wedding: Jessica and Derrick

I admit it.  I'm a wedding photo junkie.  I adore it when my customers send me pictures of their own weddings.  Love it.  LOVE.  And while those are the best, the weddings that I know I had a small hand in creating, I don't stop there.  I lurk on wedding photography forums (fabulous place to learn so much about photography, by the way).  I eagerly await new content on several photographers' blogs.

Tony Hoffer is one of those photographers.  Every wedding he captures is so brilliantly composed, so beautifully full of light and color.   I'm delighted to present this wedding of Jessica and Derrick, gorgeously captured by Hoffer Photography.

I love this moment from the first look--and the bridesmaid peeking out the door behind!

Love the ivory and gold tones in this wedding!  So elegant, so perfect for fall or winter.

The color!  The joy!  What a perfectly captured moment.

This next element is my favorite thing from the wedding.  The bride made this photo wall herself!    Looks like a really amazing way to honor family history and show off old family wedding photos, right?

But wait, there's more!  It's also the most completely awesome photo booth prop I've ever seen!  LOVE this!

To see many more pictures from this wedding, and many other equally stunning affairs, please visit Tony Hoffer's blog.  Even if you're not a wedding picture junkie like I am, you'll appreciate the magnificent photos and amazing emotion captured by this talented photographer.

DIY: Dessert Table Planning

So you have a concept for a grand dessert table.  A magnificent plan.  Maybe you've even sketched it out, like I did.  But will it all fit?

Are you sure?

The last thing you want is to be surprised in the hours leading up to your big event.

To avoid just such a scenario, a couple weeks before the Cornish fairy party, I took all of the serving dishes and floral containers I intended to use, and played around with them until I had a solid plan.  Then I took pictures.

When it came time to set up, I knew I had a roadmap ready.  All decisions were made.  If necessary, I could show the picture to a friend and delegate the duty (this always comes in handy, no matter how early I think I'm starting).

It may take a little extra time, but it is so worth it for the peace of mind.

DIY Project: Decoupaged River Rock Labels or Seating Cards

When working on the Cornish Fairy party, I wanted the labels on the dessert table to go along with the woodland decor.  I thought of the idea of writing on river rocks...but with my handwriting, that wasn't a pretty sight.  I came up with the idea of doing decoupage on the stones.  That way I could use the same font I used for the invitations and wood-burned signs, avoid my miserable penmanship, and create a continuity of decor.

Materials:

• river rocks
• tissue paper (as close in color to the rocks as possible)
• scissors
• Mod Podge decoupage glue
• paintbrush

Step 1)  Print out the text you want on the rocks on a sheet of tissue paper.  To accomplish this on my computer, I cut the tissue paper slightly smaller than a standard sheet of printer paper, and taped the tissue to the standard letter-sized paper.  I ran that through the printer, then removed the tissue from the paper backing.

Step 2)  Cut out the labels to fit the size of the rocks you're using.

Step 3)  Use the brush and Mod Podge to adhere the tissue paper to the rocks.  It's really incredibly easy and quick.

Let dry, and there you have it!  Beautifully calligraphied stones.

These would make magnificent rustic place cards for a wedding--and of course, they worked brilliantly for the dessert table at the party.  What if you gathered stones from a place significant to you and your fiancé, and made thank-you paperweights as favors?  An outdoor aisle defined by lines of river rocks would be stunning as well, and you could incorporate little messages and love notes with this technique.   So many possibilities!  Inexpensive, easy, and meaningful.  What could be better?

DIY Project: How to Get Roses To Open

Do you have a rose flower arrangement you'd like to make for a party, but the roses you bought are still closed tightly?  Full roses take up so much more space that you'll need far fewer flowers.  And fewer flowers means substantially less expensive floral arrangements, always a good thing for a budget bride.

Tightly closed, newly bought roses.

One quick and dirty, highly effective way to get roses to open up is simply to use your hands.  Physically open them up.

Get in there.  Use your hands.  Physically force the flower open.  It can take it, I promise.  Flowers live outside, in the wind and rain.  They're not as delicate as you might imagine.

Once you've opened up your roses, you'll be ready to create your flower arrangements, using about half of the flowers you otherwise would have needed!

DIY Project: Tissue Paper Rose Pomander Pinata

Pinatas aren't just for little kid's parties.  Adults have just as much fun with them, and they're great, even at weddings!

From birthdays to weddings to showers to bachelorette parties (I won't mention what my girlfriends put in my bachelorette pinata to keep this blog PG ;-) ), pinatas are fun for all ages.

The pinata I made for my daughter's Cornish Fairy birthday party would be spectacular for any number of events.  Wedding?  Bridal shower?  Baby shower?  What fun!  We've written up a tutorial on how to make it for yourself for the Kate Landers Events, LLC blog.  Head on over there and check it out!

Don't forget to enter our big giveaway while you're over there!  The contest ends Tuesday, so don't miss your last chance to enter and win a set of the tiaras I designed for the Cornish Fairies party!  (Don't need a set of eight little fairy/flower girl tiaras?  Go ahead and enter--I'll be happy to work with you on whatever you need if you win!)

Fairy Party: DIY Magical Twinkling Beverages

Let the DIY festival begin!

One of my favorite elements of the party--and something I made up myself, and have never seen anywhere else--was the submersible lighting I added to the punch to give the drinks a twinkling, magical effect.  It worked spectacularly, and was quite a hit of the party!

It's incredibly easy to get this effect.  I simply used AquaBrites waterproof floral lights.  They're designed for florists to put them in glass-vased flower arrangements to add light and flash.

I bought mine from Save-on-Crafts.com.  Only $8.50 for a set of 5, and you can bet I'm going to find more ways to use these babies!

The bubbles in the punch made some of the lights float for a while, but if you want them to be suspended at different levels all night long, hang the lights on mono-filament.  There's a handy little place where you can tie the string, as you can see in the image above.

Fairy party?  Definitely.  But how about on a steady glow in a green punch for Halloween??  I'm already planning on using them in an icy blue colored Glacial Punch for a Winter Wonderland birthday I'm working on.  The possibilities are endless!

One note--I would only put these in an enclosed punch dispenser with a spigot, like the ones pictured above, not a punch bowl or pitcher.  The kids loved the lights a little too much, and there was one three year old at the party who was sorely disappointed that the glow didn't dispense into her cup.  With a punch ladle, I think you'd likely lose your AquaBrites, and they could be a choking hazard.

Don't forget to head over to Kate Landers to enter our big giveaway!   Only a few days left!

Fairy Party: Part 4, the Grand Celebration!

The final day of the main Fairy party posts.  Enter the children!

When our small guests arrived, they were greeted by fluffy towers of tulle.  Do you have any idea how much space 22 tutus take up?

Each child selected a tutu and a tiara and headed out into the backyard to find their wings.

The birthday girl chose to be a Rainbow Fairy.

Pure happiness.

I made a complimentary outfit for baby sister, who freaks out if there's a tutu around and she's not wearing it. What can I say, the kid has a native ability to accessorize.

My husband, pulling Cornish Pasties out of the wood-fired oven I built in our backyard.  The pasties came from The Cornish Pasty Co. (Mesa, AZ location).  It's one of our favorite places to eat!  Their pasties are definitely better than mine (I'm more of a baker than a chef), so I was happy to hand off the task of making them, and do the easy part of baking them in our WFO.

A wind storm briefly blew through and threatened the party.  Made the ribbon backdrop pretty dramatic for about 15 minutes there!

The wooden utensils from Ecoware!  Told you I was going to buy them!

Gathering in the stone circle, getting ready for the treasure hunt!  Wands at the ready, prepared to battle the evil Spriggan should he appear.

Heading for the first clue.  Just how many fairies can you squeeze in one play house?  It was like a clown car with tulle.

My husband gamely played the part of the Spriggan.  Hey, it's a step up from the role of Swiper from my daughter's 4th Madeline-Dora-The-Explorer-Pirate-Princess-Pink birthday party.  

Some of the booty from the treasure hunt.

Pinata time! 

And then cake, of course.

Whew!  It was magnificently fun, both to plan and experience!  I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of the pictures of the party and my creative efforts.  I'll launch into how-tos next, many of which would be perfect for weddings or any kind of party.

Fairy Party: Part 3, the Dessert Table!

I'm definitely not a professional, but I love baking and cake decorating.  But I hadn't been exposed to the concept of a dessert table (a la Amy Atlas) until fairly recently.  I'd always offered more than just cake, but was excited to really try my hand at a grand display for this party.

The star of the show was, of course, the cake.

Two layers of caramel apple cake and one layer of chocolate.  I'm incapable of making a cake without at least one layer being chocolate.

Detail of the toadstool fairy house on the cake.

My figures are definitely inspired by Lorraine McKay's work.

Sparkly sugar cookies!  I absolutely love using disco dust (also called pixie dust--how appropriate)!

These were my favorite part, the meringue mushrooms.  I fooled a few people with these!

Thanks, Kate Landers, for the "gnome-made" label idea!

"Considerate Caramels" refers to a bit of the invitation story.  

We were going to do chocolate covered strawberries, but when I went shopping for the party, Sam's club had no strawberries.  At all.  For the first time in months and months.  Oh well, raspberries dusted with disco dust were even easier, and just as delicious!

I love the way the decoupaged rock signs turned out!  Tutorial coming up soon!

Miniature trifles!  I love any chance to use my tiny trifle dishes, and what better excuse than an English birthday party?

I take it back.  These lollipop topiaries are my favorite element of the dessert table.

All of the serving dishes were either wooden (thanks to my mom's extensive collection of wooden servingware from our years in the Philippines), or glass.  Perfect for a woodland fairy setting!  I love the slice-of-log cake plateau I made.

But I was more proud of the wooden cake stands I made!

My secret for the cake bunting:  the triangles of fabric are simply taped to the tent.  It looked better and was far easier than when I tried to sew it.

I didn't make a dessert table so much as a dessert pavilion.  I really liked the sense of importance and occasion the small tent gave the table.  Not to mention it made adding a backdrop to the table easy and make sense (rather than a random wall in the middle of nowhere).  The 7x5 tent was originally designed to go over a grill.  Thanks, Craigslist!

Tomorrow, the party as it was meant to be celebrated--with lots and lots of children!